Turn Readers into Buyers - 7 Tips for a Persuasive Sales Letter

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How to convert readers to buyers is a challenge every direct mail marketer faces.  Once the envelope is opened, the appeal (or lack thereof) of the sales letter  will make or break the deal to your potential customer. 

How do you write copy persuasive enough to turn a reader into a buyer?  Here are a few basic techniques gathered from professional copywriters all around the web.  Try integrating one or more of them into your next direct mail marketing campaign.


1.  Write a compelling headline.  You have less than 5 seconds to capture your reader's attention.  If your headline doesn't do it, then you've lost your prospect right then and there.  There are several different approaches you can take with your headline, each effective in its own way.  Here are 4: 

A.  Highlight the benefits of your product or service to your prospect.  A benefit headline answers the all-important question your prospect is asking: “What’s in it for me?”  Your conveying to them what they will get if they use your product.  Examples of a benefit headline might be:

                                                      “A flat stomach in 5 minutes a day”

B.  Pique your prospect’s  curiousity.  A curiousity headline arouses  the desire to read further, just to see what the headline means or what the answer is.  Examples of a curiousity headline might be:

“How I gambled 67 postage stamps and won $37,642”

“Do you make these mistakes in English?”

C.  Get personal.   A personalized headline speaks directly to your prospect and gets their attention.  Examples of this type of headline might be:

“Geroge, act fast… Your special offer link expires March 1^st!”

“Finally, here’s how you, Bob, can become more successful in 15 days”

D.   Just convey information.  A news headline informs your reader of some piece of information they will find useful or interesting.  Follow it with good information, then present your offer. Examples of a news headline might be:

"Breakthrough in skincare really does reduce wrinkles"

"Announcing: A new training course that will help you finally earn more than $60,000"

2.  Make sure your sales letter is the first thing your prospect reads.  You don’t want them immediately confused by a bunch of inserts and colorful brochures.   How do you do this?  Simply place all of your inserts – color brochure, coupon, order form, etc – in a separate envelope and seal it. Write something on it like, “ Open this envelope only after you’ve read the letter.”   You then place this envelope along with your  letter into a larger envelope for mailing.

If your letter is compelling enough, then your prospect is in the right frame of mind to want to buy your product and will eagerly open the second envelope to complete the order form, call your order line, or go to your website.  Your call to action should include getting them to open the second envelope.

3.  Put testimonials in your letter.  Buyers want social proof that your product is beneficial.  Testimonials should be real and should include a “before” and “after”.  In other words, the “before” would be your customer stating a problem or a need they had and their inability to resolve it and the “after” would be how your product fulfilled that need or solved that problem.

4.  Highlight benefits, not features.  Don’t focus on what your product or service does, but rather, what your reader will get from using it.  As marketing expert, Karen Scharf aptly puts it, "No one wants to buys a drill.  What they really want is a hole.”

5.  Include a clear and compelling Call-to-Action.  This is the statement that tells your prospect what you want them to do.  It could be calling for more information, going to your website to sign up, or filling out the order form to buy the product.  Whatever it is, you should make responding to it as easy and appealing  as possible.  If you can give them an incentive for responding, that’s all the better.  Offer preferred pricing, or a free trial, or free gift with purchase.  You are only limited here by your budget and your own creativity.

The key to an effective call-to-action is to be clear.  Don’t make your prospect guess what you want them to do next.  Make that next step easy, and offer an incentive if you can.  The easier and more appealing you make it, the more readers you will convert to buyers.

6.  Add a P.S. to your letter.   After the headline, the P.S. is the most read part of the sales letter. Why?  Because most people will glance at your headline, then at the signature, then skim through the P.S.  Only if those things grab their interest  will they read the remainder of your letter.  The P.S. is your last chance to capture your readers’ interest.  Use a P.S. to  repeat the  benefits of your offer,  introduce an added value, or repeat your call to action.  “The headline and the P.S. really are the one-two punch of your sales letter,” says Andrew Pritchard of inspire-consulting.

7.  Use serif fonts.  They are easier to read on the printed page, which is why newspapers always use them.  A serif font has the little extra flourishes or serifs, at the end of its characters.  Times New Roman is a serif font – notice the letter T.  Here’s a letter T in a non-serif (sans serif) font, like arial.  It may seem like a small detail, but the easier the letter is to read, the more likely your prospect will finish reading it and respond to your offer.

Writing an effective sales letter that turns readers into buyers is a skill that takes time and experience to master.   There are many professional copywriters who share their tips on the Internet to help non-professionals write their own sales letters, or you may want to hire one of them to do it for you.  Either way, these techniques will help deliver an effective finished product.

Some of the sources for this information, and valuable resources if you are writing your own copy, are: 

Headlines that work like magic

How to create powerful testimonials

Copywriting tips from the Pros

How to get your direct mail opened

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